I have been using Lightroom as my main RAW-developer the last few years. For organizing I'm using a folder structure like this: 2010/2010M04/2010-04-15. All files are located in the folder for that specific date. I use Photo Mechanic for importing and renaming and very often have to use the "Synchronize Folder" option in Lightroom to update the files.

Lately I have been trying out Aperture 3 and are having difficulties finding a way to update a "project"/day ("Folders and projects"). It creates a new project for the day, which only holds the new files. Is there a way to do this in Aperture? I can't see that "Projects and albums" work better?

Some may say I should stick to Lightroom since it does what I need, but there are a few things I'm not happy with and I would like to see if Aperture works better for me. So far I'm more happy with the outputs, but getting into trouble when I want to synchronize/update a folder with just a right-click or something that doesn't force me to create a new project and move the files around later. I have no plans to change my archiving system and still will use Photo Mechanic as importer and browser.

Inge,While Aperture 3 has made a number of important strides forward, user control of the filesystem from the application is not really one of them. Aperture users are probably best advised to leave it alone. Peter

Aperture provides all the RAW conversion, image adjustment and DAM facilities in one application.

What are you doing to you image files outside of Aperture that would require you to synchronise updates to the items you have imported into Aperture?

Mark

Thanks to both for your replies. I guess there is no simple solution to my problem with the current version of Aperture.

Mark, what I mean is that if import "folders as projects" one day, and later want to import photos taken with a different camera the same day, that hadn't been downloaded yet. For example I don't download photos from my P&S every day, and when I do Photo Mechanic will put some of the pictures in a folder that has already been imported to Aperture. I still want all my photos taken on a certain day to show in the same project for that day. I will get the same problem if I download and import photos twice on the same day.

I believe you can do this - if I understand you correctly. Select the Import button on the toolbar and the Import dialog opens. Select the source folder and click the 'Do not import duplicates' check box under the 'Aperture Library' section of the Import Settings on the right. Now click on the existing Project/Folder in the Library panel on the left. This should now import the new photos to the existing folder/project.